Today I Learned (TIL)

FlaGator said:
Sticking with the music theme.....
TIL one of my favorite Rod Steward songs-"(I know) I'm Losing You" was first done by The Temptations and not long after by Rare Earth, all before RS did it. Both covers are better than the original, IMO.
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Blasphemy :).
 
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Markola said:
TIL that UB-40 did not write Red, Red Wine. It was a cover of the song by, wait for it………..Neil Diamond!
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Wow. I just conveyed this to Son 1. We were just talking about "covers better than the original" and this didn't come up. (Still, I think either Cash's "hurt" or Jimi's "all along the watchtower" still wins)
 
SunnyOne said:
that there is a pine barrens area in my state, never knew that, but I am somewhat new to the area...so
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There are several, and perhaps many. There's a big one on Long Island, strangely called "Central", and Pine Bush outside Albany, and one in the Adirondacks (Clintonville).

And maybe one like in Westchester, or what we from the Capital District used to call "barely-Upstate".
 
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2017ish said:
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Wow. I just conveyed this to Son 1. We were just talking about "covers better than the original" and this didn't come up. (Still, I think either Cash's "hurt" or Jimi's "all along the watchtower" still wins)
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+1 on both of those. I would add K.D. Lang's Halleluia and Disturb's Sound of Silence.
 
latexman said:
I'm interested, but tl:dr. Can you point us to the best page to read about that, please?
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The PREFACE and CONTENTS summarize very well.

You can search at that link too. I think the download is searchable too, so you can peruse from your computer if online doesn't work.
 
TIL that FPNI stands for "First post nailed it". IME, one of the least used acronyms around here.
 
Today I learned about the Feline Grimace Scale, which can be used to determine if a cat is in pain. Our senior puss has a UTI and we were wondering if we should get her a pain shot along with the antibiotics, so I looked into ways of telling if she was hurting badly or not.

In the pictures, the left shows a cat with no pain, the middle has moderate pain, and the right has marked pain. The webpage has detailed descriptions of the three expressions.

https://www.aaha.org/publications/n...interprets-pain-from-cats-facial-expressions/
 

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Today I learned a few things about Cyprus that I was ignorant of. There are two British Overseas Territories on Cyprus (both are military bases). I think many know that the island is disputed between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, with the latter having internationally-unrecognized de facto control over the NE part of the island. (The island has those two strong historical influences, despite it being physically closer to Turkey and the Middle East.) Despite the fact that there is not unified control of the whole island, it is a full member state in the EU.

Turkey is a member of NATO, but not the EU. Cyprus is a member of the EU, but not NATO.
 
Thomas Edison created a division known as Edicraft in the 1920’s to sell coffee makers, waffle irons and toasters
 
Edison was also involved with the Koreshans, a cult that believed in the Hollow Earth Theory. As was Henry Ford.
 
TIL...

William Shakespeare bought an annuity toward the end of his life, so he wouldn't outlive his money. Source: "Annuities for Dummies"
 
Gremlin said:
TIL about the Grand Union Canal in England that runs from London to Birmingham (among others) and the many narrow boat/longboats that traverse it.
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We have day hired a boat on the Shropshire Union Canal at this marina for 150 pounds.
If you have some boating experience it is a lovely day.
https://nantwichcanalcentre.com/day-boat-hire/

The pace is slow enough that I jogged ahead and took this video of the boat and our friends, passing under one of the many bridges.
https://youtu.be/4Kn0jwuOmgI
The ancient farm bridges are everywhere, and very narrow underneath.
https://youtu.be/KnekjNIFhAY

It has all the amenities listed. We stopped at a great deli along the canal with all sorts of cheeses and a hot meal if you wanted it. We could make tea and coffee, and it was easy to picnic onboard.
You see a whole different slice of the countryside, seeing the back sides of the villages and farms.
We skipped the pub stop and managed to get to the furthest extent of the allowed area.
You are not allowed to lock through anywhere on the day hire. We will get a week aboard on our next trip in a larger boat and see some new countryside.
 
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On that topic, I watched an "Air Disasters" episode about a North Sea crew helicopter ditching that was fascinating. There was extreme convective weather that made big soft snow hail, and apparently the helicopter made its own lightning strike that took it down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristow_Helicopters_Flight_56C
There are lightning detectors all over the country, and the single strike that hit that helicopter was the only observed strike at that time.
They carried on a while then the tail rotor failed completely. After landing and getting into the raft, the rotor was observed barely hanging on by some cables. One of the blades had blown up from the strike.
 
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tutan said:
That’s amazing! So the Brits talked like Bogart before the war?
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The info I looked at briefly said that the British accent evolved to be non-rhotic after the Revolutionary War.

And so today I learned a new term: non-rhotic is when you don't pronounce the "r" in many words. For example, "park" sounds more like "pock". Not pronouncing the r was considered more upper-class, as demonstrated by the proverbial butler James announcing that "dinnah is sahhved".
 
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